Taking the station

Tuesday

Dec 31, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The Providence Redevelopment Agency is considering the use of the city’s power of eminent domain to “take” the South Street Power Station for a project that would create a state nursing school. Such takings,...

The Providence Redevelopment Agency is considering the use of the city’s power of eminent domain to “take” the South Street Power Station for a project that would create a state nursing school.

Such takings, depriving citizens of property rights, are always controversial. But sometimes they are necessary.

The nursing school, a joint venture of the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College, would be a desirable facility because of its location so near Rhode Island Hospital. But the project would involve private entities, possibly including offices for Brown University, dorms for students, a parking garage and a commercial real-estate developer who would lease the space to (among others) the state consortium in charge of this public/private project.

The power of eminent domain exists to enable the state to take private property for public use. The nursing-school component of the project might be considered an appropriate public use. But other components are private, and could entail misusing eminent domain to benefit one private party over another — hurting, in this case, the current owners of the power plant.

The owners include the creditors of Streuver Bros. Eccles & Rouse, which unsuccessfully sought to redevelop the 1913 plant for a mixture of uses that would have included Heritage Harbor, a state museum. That project’s remnant is now a legal tangle that the redevelopment agency believes could facilitate condemnation under eminent domain: A designation of “blight” can include “diversity of ownership.”

Untangling the legal issues could delay a project of undoubted benefit to the public for years. So city and state officials should try to find a way to iron out the issues as swiftly as possible — while holding out the possibility of using eminent domain, as equitably as possible, if that proves impossible.